I’m going through the game now and really enjoying it, however, it’s a bit of a missed opportunity and a knee jerk reaction to the poor reviews of Valkyria Revolution.
The gameplay is identical to the first (good) with some new units and weapons (great!) and despite being worried about getting attached to a new squad, I quickly grew to like the characters. However, i would have preferred some QoL updates: menus are slow and often have unskippable scenes when entering and exiting them (R&D, Training, etc.). They’re always the same on top of it, which gets grating, especially when you enter a menu by accident. There’s no mid-battle saves, so if you have to quit the game, you could lose 45-mins to an hour to get back to the same point in the battle. And if you forget to save after every battle and do something stupid, like hit Power Off when you meant to hit Rest Mode, there is no auto save to fall back on. Likewise there is no undo in battles, so a small mistake or hitting end turn too quickly might mean having to do the whole mission over, especially if you’re looking for a high grade. Finally, at least mid-game, there are pages and pages of story cut scenes which don’t auto play, are split at seemingly arbitrary boundaries, and can take 30 mins or more to go through between battles.
That said, the characters are great, once in a battle, things are great, and if you can get past the fact that it’s effectively the same game as VC1, it’s a lot of fun. I’m glad I opted for the MFB edition since the Hafen becomes an integral character in the game.